Van Halen ‘Lost Weekend’ Documentary Screening This Week

A short documentary about a Van Halen fan who won the chance to party with the band for 48 hours will be screened this week.

Titled Lost Weekend, the film tells the story of Kurt Jefferis, who won an MTV Lost Weekend contest in 1984. The 14-minute movie was made by Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb, who previously made the documentaries GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling and A Life in Waves.

The "lost weekend" took place on April 5 and 6 in Detroit. As VHND reported, Frontman David Lee Roth predicted that Jefferis “won’t know what will happen. And when it’s over, he probably won’t be able to remember it anyway.”

Jefferis and friend Tom Winnick were picked up at home by a limo, then flown to Detroit and taken to a hotel in another limo and were given a huge range of band merchandise before attending Van Halen’s concert in the Cobo Hall that evening.

With MTV cameras rolling, Jefferis recalled he was “nervous as hell” but that the band “treated us like one of the guys and really paid attention to us.” Later that evening he was taken onstage in front of 12,000 fans as the band sang “Happy Trails” to him.

You can watch MTV's original promo for the Lost Weekend below.

“The rest of the night [was] a spotty haze of hardcore rock 'n' roll excess,” the report said. “Even a member of the band’s notoriously kinky road crew described the events as X-rated.”

The second night included a food fight, while Winnick was found locked in a closet wearing a bra. “I was in recovery and shock for many days afterwards,” Jefferis recalled. “They were so friendly and entertaining, as huge as they are. … It was the best time of my life.”

While no general release date has been announced, Lost Weekend will be screened three times during the Tribeca Film Festival in New York this week: today at Regal Cinemas Battery Park at 3.45PM ET, Friday at Village East Cinema at 9.45PM ET and Saturday at Village East Cinema at 8PM ET.